No one knows this about me, but I served two years in the army before I came to university.
For anyone who didn’t know this, I’m from Cyprus. Cyprus is split into two parts, the Greek-Cypriot region and the Turkish-Cypriot region. In 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus, resulting in half of Cyprus being occupied by Turkey until today, 44 years later. Therefore, the Greek-Cypriot part made a military service unit in order to protect the fellow citizens in case the Turks decided to strike again and occupy the rest of the country. However, the disadvantage lies to the male teenagers of the country, who are required to attend the army at the age of 18 by law. Thus, in 2013, at the age of 18, a letter came home from the government with the army enrolment details. As of last year, the army service duration is 14 months but before that the duration was 2 years and I being the ‘lucky’ person that I am, attended the 2-year program. The only exception, meaning non-attendance to the army, was to have a mental disorder or to have a severe health problem which would lead to not only put yourself in danger but the fellow soldiers too.
At first, I cannot even describe how scared I was. I had this bizarre feeling of being trapped in a cage with no way out. I could see the fear in people’s eyes every time I brought this conversation up and by people I mean my closest people in the world. However, being the calm person that I am, I took up this challenge. It was a big bet with myself, seeing if I could actually survive this endless exercising, hunger or thirst. Subsequently, I was ordered around and told what is right and what is wrong, but it didn’t stop there; I had to obey anything without asking questions or even having an opinion, just because I was a soldier and I had to become ruthless and not be ‘soft’ in any way which was considered a weakness.
The orientation weeks went by and though everyone thought that I would struggle and fail, I took every chance to learn more about how the army worked, how to use the guns and be better at my shooting. This process of adapting was making me stronger and better at what I was doing without me actually thinking or noticing it. During the fourth month, my sergeant calls all of the soldiers of my team, around 30 people and announces that I’m being upgraded to a corporal and I am the new leader of the team. This progress escalated with rewards, meaning that I would be the one to make important decisions for our team. For instance, every week we would get 2 days to go and see family and wash our clothes and by the next day we had to be back at 6am. In my case rewards included, having the luxury to be 2 days out in a row or even 3 days, just because I had greater power now, and power in the army is the main criterion in order to survive — or in my case to make the survival more luxurious. I was the one deciding when the rest of the group was going out, what duties were allocated, deciding if they were up at 1am or even 5am. The four months became two years without actually noticing that I was mentally growing as a person, and I had myself to blame for that because I proved everyone wrong and left myself with no choice but to survive whatever comes in my path and deliver to the best of my ability in this new challenge that appeared in my life. This was the greatest pleasure out of it, proving everyone wrong without actually thinking about the others and focusing on your personal development. Now, 3 years after this experience I feel lucky not giving into my fears. The word is blessed; this is the exact word I would use to describe this chapter of my life. Two years full of experiences, strong friendships, memories and a character shaped in a way that leaves the undermining route of other, a dead-end for me.
